Will Scott Walker's Canadian Wall Keep the Teachers Out, Too?

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, as you know, is what Doc Pomus would have come up with, had he composed "This Magic Moron."

Hold all calls. We have a winner.

There was no reason for the judges even to consider either This Week With The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs, or Face The Nation, where John Dickerson is ably filling the greaves of former Laeodician war correspondent Bob Schieffer. The House Cup this week went almost instantly into the dark, mysterious halls of broadcasting's Hotel Overlook at NBC, where my man Chuck Todd always has been the caretaker. He was joined this week by Scott Walker, the thrice-elected goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, and Walker did everything except drop his drawers and dance the hootchie-koo. There is neither a box of rocks nor a bag of hammers big enough to analogize to this guy. Dunces look at him and think, Jesus, maybe I should look into a career in astrophysics after all. In villages all over Europe, idiots look at Scott Walker and get out of the business. Look, I achieved the degree Scott Walker never quite caught up with, and I'm not exactly Stephen Hawking here.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Let's start with the single most hilarious thing said by any candidate in the current field. Asked about the possibility of building a fence, not along the country's southern border, but along the nearly 4000-mile border that separates the United States and Canada, this is what Walker told my man Chuck Todd.

"Some people have asked us about that in New Hampshire…They have raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought that up to me at one of our town hall meetings about a week and a half ago. So that's a legitimate issue for us to look at."

There is some ensuing flubdubbery about "securing the homeland" and about "counterintellig…er…ah…wubba…wubba…counterterrorism" in there, too, but consider the vast and staggering vista of stupidity opened up by the idea of building a fence from upper Maine to the shores of the Pacific. Leave aside the basic impracticality of the entire idea – What the hell are you going to do about that part of the border that runs through Lake Superior? Submarine nets? Sonar? Volunteer muskie fishermen with AK's in their boats? Yikes. Forget I said that last part. – and concentrate solely on the fact that, what Walker believes makes this a "legitimate issue for us to look at" is the fact that "some people" at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire brought it up to him. I will pay anyone a shiny buffalo nickel if they will show up at a future town hall meeting in New Hampshire and ask Scott Walker if we should fire sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads into synchronous low earth orbit to prevent undocumented immigrants from Zontar from entering the country. It probably would be declared a "legitimate issue for us to look at."

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

(And this is not even to mention the fact that, apparently, Walker is opposed to people crossing our Canadian border but has no problem at all with the world's dirtiest fossil fuel being pumped across that same border and through the richest farmland in the United States. Tar sands don't kill people. People kill people.)

Also, Walker persisted in telling a story long ago debunked about how a woman named Megan Sampson who, according to Walker, was "someone who had been named the outstanding new English teacher of the year for the entire state." According to Walker, Sampson was one of the first teachers laid off because of those mean unions and their contracts. The problem with this fable is that Sampson herself has pleaded with Walker to stop using her as a cudgel, and that she's been begging him to stop for going on four years now.

Sampson said Thursday she felt uncomfortable with the governor using her experience to push an agenda. "My opinions about the union have changed over the past eight months, and I am hurt that this story is being used to make me the poster child for this political agenda," Sampson said. "Bottom line: I am trying to do my job and all this attention is interference and stress for me." Sampson said her phone rang four times during evening parent-teacher conferences and that more than a half-dozen calls from the media had filled her voice mail Thursday morning. Teachers popped into her class all day, and students kept asking her about it.

But here's the truly curious thing. If all you did was watch the television show on Sunday, you didn't hear Walker say any of this. In the portion of the interview that was shown on your electric teevee set, the interview with Walker skips all this entirely and goes from him prevaricating about the sweetheart deal he handed the Milwaukee Bucks to his recent confused burbling about birthright citizenship. To find the ongoing fabulism about the Teacher of The Year, and the mad plan to consider a wall along the northern border, you have to go on line and watch the entire interview. Jesus H. Christ on satellite, Chuck. You've got a presidential candidate talking utter nonsense – the Canadian Fence proposal blew up the Intertoobz by Monday morning – and you not only don't follow it up, either on the air or on-line, but also you decline to share it with your television audience. I feel cheated.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.